I've seen a lot of crescentic gouges in my time, but this is probably the most perfect one I have ever encountered in the wild. It's about 30 cm across, with the convex side facing up-glacier and the horns pointing down-glacier. It's got an almost perfect semi-circular or crescent shape, and looks like a new moon! If you click to enlarge, you should be able see the slight colour difference between the smooth pink granite rock face affected by over-riding ice and the rougher texture left when part of the surface was crunched away by a large boulder forced downwards.
This is just one of a series of photos taken on my recent visit to Rodloga Storskar in the Stockholm Archipelago. More to come, with a discussion on rock mechanics......
7 comments:
clearly a man-made miracle. Amazed they did not pick it up and take it to stonehenge.
Well, I'm sure there must have been a convenient moon-worshipping cult out here somewhere in the archipelago. Come to think of it, the crescent does look a bit like the Man in the Moon, as I remember him from my childhood......
29 March 2015 on the Blog. Crescentic gouges at Rhosyfelin. Worth a read by all open - minded objective archaeologists.
You've went onto the Stockholm Archipelago to capture this image of one of the Crescentic gouges. Nearer your Welsh home, have Skokholm (slightly different spelling) or Skomer, both Viking island settlements west of Miford Haven, any glacial features worthy of comparison?
My brother fairly regularly visits Skomer, primarily for the wildlife photography.
From a long - ago geomorphology student at your feet!
Look out the lyrics for R.E.M.'s "Man In The Moon" for a chuckle if you have never heard them properly before. Perhaps they'd do a new Verse for Mr Michael P'Pearson to follow Mr Charles Darwin etc etc....I only require 10% of Royalties.
The traces of glacial action on the Pembs islands are very subtle. I have never seen any striae (or crescentic gouges) on Skomer, Skokholm or Ramsey -- but there are obvious traces of ice action (especially till) on Caldey. That's a bit strange, given that Caldey was near the ice edge and that the other three islands appear to have been heavily inundated by ice in the Devensian. I have not had the time systematically to examine the islands -- maybe there are treasures waiting to be discovered.
Thanks for that, Brian. Some of my fellow Community singers are off to Lundy Island in August, a favourite annual haunt of our Choir Leader. Wish I was going - last visit a quarter of a Century ago.....
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